Durc found enough eggs to stave off hunger for a while, but he lost his fire after some days of travel. His luck held in one way, at least--he found shelter before the rain got too heavy. But the rocky overhang that kept off the half-frozen rain had scant space for a fire and what little fuel he had soon became cold ashes. He spent two nights and a day huddled against the side of a washout created by a long-ago river before the advent of the Great Ice. With no food and nothing to do but sleep and think, he did both... and dreamed...
A pack of wolves ran northward under a high full moon. Thin snow covered the ground, soft in one of winter's milder moods. Durc watched them pass by. Another wolf followed behind, larger than the rest. It stopped, stared back at Durc. The wolf raised a paw as if to shake off snow--he had seen them do that--but instead it moved its paw in what looked like the Clan gesture for "come with me".
The dream had a feeling of familiarity when he awoke, shivering, to a clear dawn. Dreams are elusive things; at least his were. Normal people seemed to have clearer dreams with less uncanny imagery, except perhaps mog-urs, who would be more disposed to seeing spirit creatures. He couldn't sit there and play mog-ur, though. Cold had seeped into his limbs, he needed to move.
He continued to head north. At first he had had no goal except to get away from his clan's territory. A northward route took him through the area in which they hunted mammoths. Beyond that lay a land known only in Memories and now inhabited by the Others. He had only second-hand knowledge of them, most of it not conducive to thoughts of contact. Yet--was not the woman who gave birth to him one of them?
One did not question the will of one's totem. Durc set his jaws against all feeling and ran with the rising sun to his right, straight into the unknown.
His feet left a trail of small devastations as he loped over the rain-washed land. Fire had removed the cover of last year's dead grass here. The earth now bore a thin carpet of new shoots sprinkled with flowers. Each footstep crushed them into the damp soil, leaving a blank smear of mud. When he had run enough to warm himself, he slowed, thinking of food.
The sun felt warm. Durc scanned the ground, remembering the days when, as a boy, he had sometimes accompanied Uba--and "mamma" before her--as she gathered medicine and food. He recognized the flowers and new shoots of some edible plants. Feeling rather foolish, he squatted to dig out a few roots with his hands. No real man would do this, he knew. But he was a freak, a living miscarriage, and he was hungry.
Not far off he saw an area untouched by the mammoth hunters' fire, where low trees grew on lower ground. There should be water where trees grew, at least in spring. He rubbed clinging dirt off the roots with his hands and added them to the extra-large carrying pocket he had made in his wrap by folding it differently. A woman's wrap lent itself better to such use--what an odd thought! It didn't cover him much any more, but that mattered little while the sun shone.
He had removed his sling from the wrap first, and two stones that he had collected elsewhere. Approaching the thicket slowly, he watched for any sign of small game. His head moved from side to side, the better to spot an unmoving animal.
A rabbit leaped from a clump of basket-grass, but stopped a short distance away. Durc moved his arm slowly, watching the rabbit watch him. Sudenly he swung and released, anticipating the wary animal's reaction. His accurately slung stone slammed against the rabbit's back as it leaped away, and it fell, half paralyzed by the blow. Durc reached it in a few long leaps of his own. He grabbed it by the hind legs and swung it against the ground, then put one foot on its head and jerked, breaking its neck. For a brief moment he paused to thank his totem and the spirit of the rabbit. Then he gutted it and devoured its warm liver, a tasty tidbit.
As he waited for his fire to take hold on the larger pieces of wood, Durc looked over his trove. Fresh meat and washed roots ready to cook--and no woman to cook them. The rabbit's hide lay there too, with no woman to give it to. It was big enough to use as a carrying bag for sling-stones, but it was raw, not even scraped.
Durc had watched women do all those things. All he could do now was try. Perhaps he could learn to do it. Spirit of the Grey Wolf, he said to his totem, I accept the tests you give me. This man knows not why you want him to live, but it shall be as you wish.
He looked at the uncooked feast once more and the absurdity of his situation struck him more strongly than ever. A strange feeling welled up inside him. He recognized it from a long-buried memory of "mamma". One of the sounds that they used to make together, the "ha-ha" noise, tickled in his throat. He let it go--who would punish him for making noise here, alone?
Birds flew up in alarm at the strange braying sound.